


save it for the unplanned

by maridoll



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, So here we are, aka i thought abt that one year robin spent on the gl before joining croc, and realized it was just abt the time franky comes back to w7, takes place pre-canon start
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maridoll/pseuds/maridoll
Summary: The time robin spends in water seven, where escape is made easy on the sea train, where she encounters frankyThe time franky meets robin, safeguards the blueprints, reveals he had a hand in building the sea train, and discovers that maybe robin isn’t someone to be feared after all





	save it for the unplanned

**Author's Note:**

> alternating narratives. i checked this once and wrote it early in the morning in one sitting so there might be errors floating about.
> 
> robins 23, franky abt 29. possibly a month after franky gets the pluton plans from iceburg.

She doesn’t rent a yagara bull.

 

That would mean having money. That would mean showing her face from beneath the hood she wore. Both were options she couldn’t afford to take.

 

Being here didn’t mean things were any different. Sure, her chest felt lighter at the notion that the Sea Train was there, that it could whisk her off without any worry, but there was a stark difference between feeling relief at an easy escape and taking advantage of that escape to do something stupid. She couldn’t get away if she got caught first, after all.

 

Pirates weren’t an anomaly around here, so there were plenty of odd people to gawk at that were not the tall, dark-skinned woman wearing the long cloak. It had been overcast since she arrived, as well, so the cloak wasn’t particularly strange to begin with. 

 

Renting a yagara bull would be a nicety, but not a necessity. She can wander the concrete paths all she needs, and when the next area needs to be reached, all she has to do is search a little for a bridge crossing over. Most of them are higher, and she has to enter a few buildings to access some, but it’s not much of a problem.

 

Water 7 hosts a unique culture. She hasn’t been here that long, but figuring it out was rather simple. The food was different, the clothes of a slicker material, the people and their verbal tics. She hadn’t strayed far from dock six, but the further she goes inland, the more curious she gets. 

 

The people are nice enough. She rasps her voice and speaks quickly to a shop owner when asking how the layout of the city worked. The answer she got was that if she didn’t know it by heart, she was pretty much fucked. No maps, no guides, no structure. The citizens relied on their gut, and if that didn’t cut it, hopefully you knew a few faces that could help point you in the right direction.

 

That’s when Robin asked if she could get directions back to the shore. 

 

The problem with kind old shopkeepers giving directions without a map to reference was that they assumed you knew at least a little of what they were saying. With the woman’s accent coupled with unfamiliar landmarks, she ended up wandering without knowing her course.

 

She sighs in annoyance, the action giving her odd looks by a few passing people that makes her jerk her hood down lower, drop her head a bit. With her luck, it would rain soon. And if she wanted to make it to the overhang she saw outside dock six before it started, she needed to get there soon.

 

An idea springs forth. Maybe she could ask the conductors working the train station. She’d seen several wandering about directing people, so even if all the trains had departed, there should still be some help left.

 

Except, if she remembered correctly, the station was near dock three -across the entirety of the city. Which . . well. At this point that was not an option.

 

She turns a corner and slows her pace a bit to avoid a collision with the racing pedestrian. It doesn’t help -he still ends up crashing into her, sending her face-first into the stone wall. As she’s prying herself off of it, wincing at the tenderness of her skin, her collider backpedals to check on her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

 

It clunks. Which is odd to begin with, but it also felt rather heavy for a simple hand.

 

“Yow! Sorry about that, my fault!”

 

Her hood has slipped a bit, but she shrugs off the hand in lieu of fixing it, turning to face-

 

Oh.

 

It’s- a man? She assumes. By the- the swim trunks. Right. But her eyes catch the most on the metal nose. It was a nose, right? She’s certainly seen a lot of abnormalities, but a completely metal nose was a new one for sure. 

 

“You okay?”

 

She blinks, caught a bit off-guard. “I’m fine.”  _ You should watch it next time, these turns are sharp. _ “No harm done.” 

 

She finds that if you spoke curt enough, people would lay off, move on. Not this one, though.

 

“Ah, what a relief! I was in a  _ super _ hurry, this rain doesn’t cooperate well with my body, but that’s no excuse!” He holds out a hand, for her to shake this time, and her eyes wander up to the bulging arm, to the star tattoo. “I’m Cutty Flam, by the way.”

 

Finally, she remembers herself and reaches up to grasp the edge of her hood, to pull it over her forehead. With her other hand she casually takes his offered one, loosely shaking it once only for it to be bobbed a few more times before being released. That was fine. If she shook, she could avoid offering her own name. For as often as she’d had the chance to use one, she was terrible at coming up with any sort of alias.

 

She opens her mouth but the man beats her to it, suddenly full-body tensing up and waving both large hands around. The movement is odd, but she doesn’t feel threatened.

 

“Ah, wait, actually! Forget that! I’m Franky.” He jabs a thumb at his face, trying to grin down at her but looking more nervous than anything. “Call me Franky.” 

 

A slip, then. Fine. She wasn’t interested in finding out what importance the name held here; it wasn’t like she’d be here long enough to investigate, anyway.

 

That was a sour outlook to have, though. Instead, she thinks, if she was lucky she’d be here a few days. Yeah. That was more like it. A bit more positive.

 

Though, in her experience, thinking positively would only lead to disappointment.

 

Like now, as she catches on to a new gleam in “Franky’s” eyes, and she realizes she’s been looking at his face just as much as he’s been looking at hers. 

 

“Wait.” Not good. “You’re . .” Not good not good. His arms drop, hanging at his sides. “Aren’t you Nico-”

 

She jerks her hood down, covering half her face, and holds her hand up in a gesture for him to stop. “I suggest you not finish that,  _ Cutty Flam _ .”

 

To her luck, he doesn’t. When she takes a chance and glances up at him, he looks caught off-guard, sure, but more than that is the underlying sense of urgency. She watches carefully as he raises both hands, waiting for them to reach out and grab at her, but he makes a surrendering motion instead.

 

“Fine. I’ll let you know you have something over me with that name. Please don’t use it. With that said-” He breaks off, and the rain finally comes down.

 

She’s mostly fine, her cloak thick enough, but she could see where his problems lie. For one, he was in an open top and swim briefs. Two, if her suspicions were correct, his nose wasn’t the only metal part of his body he needed to worry about getting wet and rusted.

 

“With that said,” he continues, focus captured again. “I have a place around here. A shelter, really. It won’t get much warmer than this, but it’ll be dry. Come have tea with me.” He holds his hands in a placating gesture once again as she makes to speak, cutting her off before she can begin. “I hope it gives you some security to know we both hold something over each other. If you have somewhere to go, I won’t keep you. But, if you don’t, then please.” He finally lowers his arms again, slouches a little, and the tension in her shoulders leaves, just a little. “You’ll only get more wet out here.”

 

She doesn’t have any place to go. Places require money. But there was that overcrop she saw at the edge of dock six. She could go there. If . . If she could find how to get there. She hesitates. “Where . . . is it?”

 

“The shore of dock six. Not far from here at all.”

 

Shit. Looks like she was in perfect luck. That didn’t happen often. 

 

“Fine. She tips her head back, just a little, to meet his eyes from underneath the hood. “Lead the way.”

 

It turned out the place Franky was talking about was the exact place she was looking to get to. The exact same place. The overhang under the bridge. She didn’t know there was already a living space there, but that didn’t matter.

 

The exact place.

 

\--

 

What the hell was he doing.

 

It wasn’t hard to recognize her from the wanted poster, especially when it had been drilled into his mind, the looks of her eight-year-old self, the things she could do, the warnings Tom had given,  _ danger danger danger _ resounding over and over in his mind.

 

Franky can barely make tea.

 

You heat water. You put shit in water. You might add sugar depending on the other ingredients. Whether it tastes good depends on the person.

 

He didn’t really drink tea anymore, so he hoped Ms. Nico wasn’t a picky person. 

 

He was so stupid. This whole thing was stupid, but  _ he _ was the cause, the reason. He barreled into her, he told her his real -now secret- name, he  _ invited her here _ . Here, where the plans for Pluton were. Franky knew he wasn’t leaving Water 7, but he still didn’t exactly know what to do with the blueprints, so they were buried between stacks of old drafts that sat collecting dust by an abandoned drawing table in the workroom. Not hidden per say, but not lying around either. More hidden in plain sight, maybe? Besides, it’s not like anyone knew of this place.

 

Except for, y’know, the most important person who shouldn’t,  _ couldn’t _ , know.

 

Goddamn.

 

He brings out a kettle, bruised and otherwise worn, a single cup with a crack at the lip, a small blanket, and a timid smile.

 

He’s the only one smiling.

 

“Here.” He hands her the blanket first. She’d taken off her cloak, and though her clothes looked warm enough underneath, it really wasn’t much better in here than outside. Even though the flow of water kept most of the wind out, and therefore the rain, everything was hard concrete. The only real sheltered place was the drawing room, but there was no way he was letting her see that.

 

Yeah. This place wasn’t perfect by any means.

 

He recalls old memories of curling up on the floor, squished in that room together with Tom and Iceburg. 

 

She breaks him out of it by wrapping the blanket around herself, nodding a thanks to him. He steps back and pours the tea, setting the halfway broken cup on the table in front of her and taking a seat on the sofa adjacent.

 

She looks at it for a moment before cocking a brow at him. “None yourself?”

 

He sets the kettle down and shakes his head. “Ah, no. I actually run on cola.”

 

The look stays. “Run?”

 

Right. He hesitates, but it couldn’t hurt. Yeah? Yeah. So he grasps at his midsection and finds the notch, and pulls open the hatch to reveal the three glass bottles in the interior. “See? Cola. It’s  _ super _ great. Especially from Blueno’s, it’s this new bar around dock four. Well, I think it’s new. It should be new. But it’s been a while since I’ve . . . Uh, are you okay?”

 

“Your stomach is hollow.”

 

She says it straight, but her eyes are wide, a hand in front of her mouth in shock. He looks down and then slowly closes the hatch back up, scratching at his hair.

 

“Ah, yeah. I’m- a cyborg? I’m more metal than human now, at least.”

 

As if to move on, she takes a sip of the tea. A slight grimace works its way onto her face, so he guesses it’s bad, but she takes another sip before setting it down, so. Maybe not.

 

“By choice?”

 

“By . . ?” Oh. He sucks his lips into his mouth, chewing for a bit. “By necessity, I guess.” He jabs his thumb to the back wall, in the direction he knew the tracks ran. “Got banged up pretty bad by the Sea Train. Only thing around were scraps. It was either modify myself, or die.”

 

“That’s pretty hardcore.”

 

He shrugs. “Well, I’m pretty super now. Literally. So I don’t mind much.”

 

She takes another sip of the tea, leans back a bit. Takes the chance to glance around, though there isn’t much to see. He can’t help but track the movement of her brown orbs, wondering if she knew anything yet, if she was picking everything apart and waiting to make a move.

 

No. That was absurd. There was nothing on the outside. There was just the drawing room.

 

“So.” Her eyes turn back to him. “Who’s Cutty Flam?”

 

He bristles, as much as he can with metal shoulders, anyhow. “Who’s Nico Robin?” he counters.

 

She doesn’t react other than giving him a hapless look. “Don’t you already know?”

 

“I know what the stories say.”  _ What Tom said. _ “What the rumors are. But not everything you hear is true.”

 

“I’m not giving you my life story, if that’s what you’re asking.” She takes another sip of the tea. Surely it isn’t that good, he’d only tossed in some leaves, let the handle strain the liquid out. Maybe he should offer sugar.

 

“Do you need sugar?”

 

She pauses, cup halfway to her lips. Damn. He doesn’t even have sugar. He supposes he could go out and get some. “No.”

 

Okay then.

 

A loud crash of thunder sounds from outside, lighting up the water.

 

_ O-kay _ then.

 

He sighs. “That storm won’t stop until morning.”

 

She sets the cup down. The hand gripping the edge of the blanket turns a bit whiter at the pressure. “Am I uninvited now?”

 

“No.” He sighs. Time to do another thing he would regret. “You shouldn’t be out in it. Stay here.”

 

The silence thickens, brewing the same type of strong as the tension that had been present from the start. He looks away. 

 

Robin carefully picks her feet up off the ground and slips her shoes off. She lets them dangle for a moment, glances back at the door, then to Franky. With a small sigh of her own, she curls her legs on the couch, under the blanket.

 

“Nico Robin is an archaeologist.”

 

Franky looks up.

 

Robin is eyeing him carefully. Her voice is barely audible over the water.

 

“She’s investigating the hundred year gap in history, the Void Century. It’s outlawed to study it, so the government put a bounty on her head.” She’s still looking straight at him. It’s unnerving. “It’s outlawed to study it, so the marines blew up Ohara, where all her fellow archaeologists were investigating it.” He has to look away first, but he can’t. He’s captivated. “It’s outlawed to study it, so they killed her mother and sent eight-year-old Nico Robin on the run.”

 

She grows silent after this, so Franky has time to process. Definitely not what he’d heard, yet still threatening all the same. No mention of blowing up the navy ships. A definite mention that she was researching what was forbidden. Which meant she could read the Pluton plans. Probably.

 

He refuses to look in the direction of the drawing room. 

 

“She’s been running for fifteen years now.”

 

“So the . . sinking the marine ships . .” He stumbles off, not even sure where he was going. She was eight. He knew it was far-fetched. Even Tom didn’t pay it any mind, putting her high bounty on being able to read an ancient language. But  _ still _ . His curiosity was wound up.

 

She smiles a little, moves under the blanket. And then an arm sprouts from the table, picks up her cup, and holds it out for her to take with an arm that is very much attached to her body.

 

He can’t help it. His jaw drops.

 

“I have a devil fruit, and I can use it to defend myself. But it’s not the most combat-oriented.” 

 

Well that answered his question. And brought about many new ones.

 

She had ended up answering his question. He’s still not exactly sure, but it probably has to do with him allowing her to stay here.

 

He still wasn’t telling her about him though. Now that it was pretty much confirmed-

 

Still. He knew what it meant to be wronged by the World Government. He could empathize. 

 

She sets the tea cup back down, empty. He moves to fill it but she waves him off.

 

“It’s late enough. I’ll sleep now, if that’s okay.”

 

He hadn’t noticed it had gotten dark. “Yeah. That’s cool.”

 

She turns to lie down, resting her head on the armrest of the sofa. He doesn’t miss that she’s positioned to face the door. 

 

He picks himself up and makes his way over to the drawing room, where his mat had been pulled from the stack of three and lied out on the ground for a few weeks now. If she was gone when he woke up, oh well. 

 

It takes two minutes inside to realize she had his only blanket, and that the lamp lit in the corner provided a level of warmth along with the closed-off area that just didn’t exist out where Robin was, out in the open space.

 

He heaves himself up with a deep huff. 

 

His eyes shift over to the drawing paper stacked beneath the drawing table in the corner, the one with Tom’s tag pinned to the wall above it. He was tired himself, so he couldn’t avoid eventually falling asleep and risking her looking around. 

 

With another huff, he scoots over to dig through the stack and pull out the plans Iceburg had entrusted to him not that long ago. He might be able to build it, but Nico Robin could also decipher these pages, could use it for who-knows-what.

 

_ To research history _ , his mind supplies.  _ She has no interest in weapons. _

 

He’d gone with his gut enough times in his life to know that when he did, good things didn’t exactly happen. Things never went well.

 

He tells himself this, yet he still folds up the blueprints and opens his midsection compartment, stashing them in a corner, behind the cola bottles. She couldn’t find them on his person. That was the one place they’d always be safe.

 

When he wanders back out, her head pops up from the armrest, eyeing him warily. He stops just outside the door, then slowly opens it up to reveal the room. He can see her form shivering from where he stands.

 

“It’s warmer in here.” He could pull out another mat. 

 

She takes a moment, but eventually rises, folds the blanket around herself, and pads closer.

 

“You’re being awfully generous to a criminal like me.”

 

The words are muttered, and they nearly pierce through him. How long had she said? Fifteen years?

 

They’re both settled down in the warm light before he speaks again. He can’t believe he’s doing this.

 

“Cutty Flam was a shipwright.”

 

\--

 

They don’t rent a yagara bull. But Franky does buy them food. She doesn’t ask how he has money. He doesn’t tell her, either.

 

They wander around, him showing her little things along the way. Her cloak is back on, hood pulled low. Robin would rather not be around Franky any more than she had to, not because he wasn’t decent company at this point but rather because he stood out  _ so much _ .

 

And this was a place often swarming with various pirate crews, so that was saying something.

 

She did, however, need a guide to the Sea Train. Just to see it, she tells herself. She doesn’t believe it, though. Not at all. 

 

It’s her easy means of escape. She has to know how to access it, but most of all, how to get to it should she need it.

 

No. She knows better than that.  _ When _ she needs it.

 

Franky navigates them through the floating city with ease, even without a ride on the water. It’s easy to see that he lives here, that he’s lived here for a long time. 

 

They arrive at the station without any trouble.

 

“Here it is.” He hangs back, let’s her explore on her own, trailing behind. “Blue Station.”

 

“Blue, huh.”

 

She’s enthralled. One of the trains is departing the tracks, whistling and taking off at a leisurely pace. It’s not long before it picks up speed, and then it’s nearly out of sight.

 

Amazing.

 

“Y’know, I helped build the first Sea Train,” Franky says, coming to walk a bit more beside her.

 

Robin stops. Turns to eye him carefully. “Did you now.”

 

He bobs his head. “My shipwright teacher was the one who drew up all the blueprints for it, actually. It took ten years for one train and one set of tracks.”

 

Her eyes widen. “Really.” She glances back. There were clearly multiple tracks.

 

He seems to notice this. “Four years for everything else. Fourteen years overall.”

 

“Your teacher was an amazing shipwright, then,” she muses.

 

He laughs a little at this. “Yeah, of course! He was really super! The best in the world!”

 

Another train pulls in and people climb out. Robin draws into herself, but his words catch her attention. “‘Was’?”

 

Franky’s eyes lid. His lips pinch together. Carefully, he eyes the growing crowd and nods in a direction, leads them out of the station’s path. Once they’re a bit more isolated, he slows their pace.

 

“Four years ago, he got framed by the government and had an old crime resurface because of it. He was sent to Enies Lobby. It’s a judicial island. They say if you get sent there, you never come back.”

 

“What a shame,” she mutters.

 

“I challenged the Sea Train he was on to get him back.” He shrugs. “But I lost.”

 

And it connects. His accident. His current body. 

 

It should impact her more, how they’ve both been affected by the World Government, but her brain lodges onto something else. The Sea Train connected to this Enies Lobby. One switch of the tracks and her freedom ride, her easy escape, could be her death sentence.

 

Franky stops moving and in light of her somehow allowing her attention to drop she jerks to a standstill as well. He eyes her carefully for a moment, then gestures to the building they’d stopped in front of.

 

“Here’s Blueno’s, that bar I mentioned. I need a couple more bottles of cola, and we were nearby, sorta.” He shrugs. “You don’t have to come in, but I can get you something, if you do come in.”

 

She purses her lips. Bars were sketchy. The patrons were usually in their own world to notice anything peculiar, but the people behind the counter tended to be her worst kind of enemy. The ones that remember. The ones that act.

 

But Franky was here. Franky knew this town. Franky had been here before. And she shouldn’t trust Franky, she shouldn’t trust this easily, but everything had turned out well so far.

 

She sighs. They enter the bar.

 

The owner, Blueno, is nice enough. He doesn’t ask questions, but he glances at her a couple more times, even after she’s lowered her hood. Franky gets his cola and they both eat a small snack, him talking up Blueno between him serving other patrons. The place is busy, but not too crowded. It’s nice. It’s almost normal. 

 

After they leave, she can still feel eyes on her. 

 

They don’t go away.

 

\--

 

She tells him to meet her at the station, early. First departure early.

 

He’s not surprised when he turns up and she doesn’t show.

 

That she’d already left.

**Author's Note:**

> i jotted down the first three words of the title then went back to writing then completely forgot the rest so i just winged the rest of the title so uhhhhh yeah.
> 
>  
> 
> tumblr @ cheswirl.


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